Google Kils Google Reader

Is an interesting thought experiment. In one stroke Google could wipe out a large tent pole for the RSS eco system. Wouldn't that effectively make RSS dead?

Not only do people use Google Reader as means to read RSS, way to many RSS Readers use Google Reader as the crawling infrastructure for there app.(Newsblur being a notable exception). So killing google reader would pwn a large number of apps.

After the main support is gone, why would you build RSS into your product at all? Can RSS, that is propped up by one tenuous pole, last forever?